Thread: Rhino/MadCAM

For me, they're all good tutorials at the moment... but if I find one that I think is pretty good, no worries, I'll get in as a link

I found out pretty quick that loft is a good and easy way to do a guitar neck. Start with the two profile curves and just loft between them, but it's not great on radical direction changes. I've been working on patch as was suggested and that works pretty good.

Currently I'm working on a T5 timing belt joiner. A little bit of real world necessity that forces me to use Rhino. I always find that without a real project, it's harder to learn something.
So far, I've been joining belts without much success - mainly because I just 'dodgy' it together -, so I lashed out and had one made up to specs. It lasted about 30 hours and split halfway across nowhere near the join they did. For 140 bucks, I would have expected better and when I took it back to sook about it, I was told 'Well, there's nothing we can do about it..." (I won't mention the company who did it, but I reckon they deserve a good lashing )

Hence the joining rig to go back to joining belts myself.
The first trials seem to be pretty good, but I need a little more pondering over some technical issues.

"A little bit of real world necessity that forces me to use Rhino." .....How true
I recently need a mitre fence for my bandsaw and the sell of the bandsaw did not recommend the one there where sell for it so had to make one. I have put this in the thread Mods to my hammer n4400
I now often sketch something up on rhino first before using pencil and paper I have now found this just easier.
"Hence the joining rig to go back to joining belts myself."
"The first trials seem to be pretty good, but I need a little more pondering over some technical issues."
I did not know you could join t5 belts, but then again had not thought about it. Some photos if possible.
If you want to expand on this I would like to throw my 3 cents into the ring.

R

Originally Posted by Malibu

So far, I've been joining belts without much success - mainly because I just 'dodgy' it together -, so I lashed out and had one made up to specs. It lasted about 30 hours and split halfway across nowhere near the join they did. For 140 bucks, I would have expected better and when I took it back to sook about it, I was told 'Well, there's nothing we can do about it..." (I won't mention the company who did it, but I reckon they deserve a good lashing )

Why wouldn't you mention the name of the company? It is sites like this that alert others to the problems that may arise from some companies ideologies.

Originally Posted by rusel

I did not know you could join t5 belts, but then again had not thought about it. Some photos if possible.

Well, the joiner is done and I'm happy to say it's working reasonably well... but, the short comings, I think, are my inability to get the technique perfect. For a while there, I had so many bad joins, that I started to think that maybe you can't join T5 belt. I kept on with persistence and the joins seem to be holding fairly well at the moment. So far today I've done about 6 hours of medium duty machining on a few joins and they don't seem to be ready to pop apart yet. As a trial, I'll keep an eye on things and see how it all goes.

Why wouldn't you mention the name of the company?

I didn't want to get deep into the slagging of a company, as well as not wanting to hijack my own thread
Since you've asked, I dealt with pies in campbellfield, but I won't be going back there again....................
(I've heard all their excuses - "It must be the machine...", "You must have had a jam-up...", "Some thing got caught in the belt..." - oh, WHATEVER! )

Anyway, here's a few pictures and the resultant joins. I'm sure I can get them better with a little more practice, but this is a first go result... As you can see from the wear marks under the washers, I've had a few shots at this joining caper
To cut the belt, I clamp a piece into the base, then run a knife down the heater slot for both sides and that does a perfect angle to align with each other.
For heating, I have a temperature controlled aluminium that I rigged up a 'paddle' bar that I set for 290 degrees and slip down into the slot between the belts. Once it's all good and gooey, Just slide the two 'wings' together, clamp it up good and tight and let it cool a little. Job done!

Well I am impressed and the heated up urethane holds?
How tight a radius will that join run on? or is it just like a standard belt?

R

Originally Posted by rusel

Well I am impressed and the heated up urethane holds?
How tight a radius will that join run on? or is it just like a standard belt?

R

As they say in the classics... So far, so good

I suspect it will fail at some stage, so the next test is the time taken before it does fail - and I'll only know that when it happens.
Joining poly belts is pretty easy and I've done a heap of them on printing machines. It's a matter of the right temperature and squashing the melted ends together as quick as possible. The thing that makes this hard is the kevlar cord, because if there's too much squash at the join, the kevlar fans out and fills most of the join area and makes it very weak from no bonding. I think I might be able to remove the furry bits of kevlar from the cut by teasing it out of the poly and dab a little CA glue on the feathers. I should be able to cut away the hardened kevlar dags with a scalpel and have a clean poly surface to work from. That's something to try out at a later date.

This is being run on a couple of 15 tooth drive pulleys, which is probably about 12mm radius and seems to bend around that no problems. As I said previously, I'm only doing a bit of medium duty work (Cutting through 2mm Aluminium with a .5mm Vee bit at 600mm/min in 3 passes) so it will be interesting to see what happens with a 16mm rough cutter at 2000mm/min and 5mm deep!

o it will be interesting to see what happens with a 16mm rough cutter at 2000mm/min and 5mm deep!

This will be a good work out for your belt joins........
R